How to Use Twitter Analytics to Boost Sales and Traffic in 2019

Twitter is certainly one of the front-runners of the present digital marketing scene. After all, it has changed the way brands communicate to their audience in the present world.

It might not sound surprising that over 85% of the global leaders and brands use Twitter to share their ideas and interact with their audience. These days, marketers consider ROI and sales as a priority while coming up with a future-proof strategy. To do this, most of the experts seek the assistance of Twitter Analytics.

To help you use Twitter Analytics like a pro, I have come up with this detailed guide that has included the following topics:

Why Should You Try Twitter Analytics?

Common Challenges Related To Twitter Analytics

Is Data Analytics on Twitter Really Important?

What Are The Key Metrics You Should Consider in Twitter Analytics?

4 All-purpose Twitter Analytics Tools to Try in 2019

Let’s get it started with!

Why Should You Try Twitter Analytics?

If you are new to Twitter marketing, then you might not be aware of the analytics that its native platform provides. Besides that, there are also third-party analytics tools that we can try. Ideally, the following are some crucial reasons that will convince you to rely on Twitter Analytics.

For taking data-driven decisions

Since Twitter provides a fast, seamless, and effective way to reach out to a wider audience, it is still considered as one of the priority mediums by B2B and B2C brands. Though, with over 500 million tweets posted each day, it might be a tough job to stand out of the crowd.

With the help of Twitter analytics, you can make more data-oriented decisions. For instance, you can know if your marketing strategy is working out or not, how well your competitors are performing, whether you are gaining or losing followers, the ROI of the promoted content, and so on.

It will help you understand your audience

Ideally, your audience should match with your brand and the kind of leads you wish to attract. For instance, if you manage a lifestyle brand, then your audience should be interested in similar products.

To resolve this, you can go to the Audience tab in Analytics. It will let you know what kind of things your audience is interested in, their demographic details, and so on.

To identify the content that works the best for you

It doesn’t matter if you are an expert or a novice – at the end of the day, social media is all about hit-and-try. There are some tweets that would work well, while some won’t. To identify the content that works the best for you, you can view the overall engagement and impressions of your tweets. Try to understand the similarity between the top-performing content and work on your tweets accordingly.

To know when is the best time to tweet?

This is a million-dollar question that every marketer wants to know. While some people say that weekday noon gets the most traction, others feel that early weekend posts do the trick. Ideally, it would depend on your audience and the type of content you have posted. There are third-party tools like Tweroid that will help you devise the best time for posting your content on social media.

It has been noticed that the average lifespan of a tweet is just 24 minutes – and thus, timing is the most important thing in this fast-paced social platform. I would recommend posting all sorts of content at different intervals and analyzing their individual analytics. This will help you identify the time slots that work the best for you with the nature of content your audience related to the most.

To identify the reach of your brand’s content

If you manage a brand, you may need to know how your brand’s hashtag campaigns are performing. You will be concerned about what influencers are posting and whether it is making an impact or not? In such cases, you have to analyze related keywords or hashtags you are promoting using third-party twitter analytics tool like socialert

Common Challenges Related To Twitter Analytics

While the native feature of Twitter Analytics provides decent results, there are certain challenges that users face. Following are some of the major limitations or pitfalls that I found in the native analytics section.

No real-time analysis

This is one of the major drawbacks of inbuilt analytics by Twitter – as it is only refreshed on a daily basis. While we can know about the overall engagement and impression of a previous post, it doesn’t provide any real-time data. Therefore, we can’t take instant marketing decisions about the need for boosting any post or not.

Lack of visual representation

While Twitter has done a decent job with its analytics, it all looks way too basic. If you are a marketer, then you would have to spend hours converting this data into impressive visuals. The only good thing is that we can export this data into a CSV file for offline analysis.

Limited features

Furthermore, the native tool also falls short of the following things:

There is no provision to compare different profiles or do competitor analysis.

The dashboard is only updated daily and does not provide real-time updates.

It doesn’t readily show the best time to tweet according to your audience.

No or limited provision to track hashtags, keywords, or accounts.

Limited solution to perform social media listening.

Is Data Analytics Really Important?

In a nutshell – yes, data analytics matter a lot in making a strategic digital marketing plan. With the right data, you can take tons of crucial decision that would help with your marketing strategy. Here are some of the vital things that data analytics will help you unravel.

By knowing the overall interest of your audience, you can draft the kind of content that they like.

You can measure the performance of various tweets and pick the best time for posting or the kind of top-performing content.

It will let you keep a track of your followers and you can know at what rate you are gaining or losing them.

If you want to redirect your Twitter audience to a link, then you can simply check if your strategy is working or not.

You can also compare tweets and check the kind of visuals that your audience relate to the most.

There is also a dedicated section to measure the performance of promoted tweets. This will let you calculate the ROI of your promoted campaigns.

To further make it clear, let’s consider an example.

Although Kellogg’s has an evident following on social media, it took them a while to understand what their audience wants. By taking the assistance of Twitter analytics, they could have identified the interest of their audience and come up with more engaging content. There was a time when their Twitter handle would post about politics, spring cleaning, and everything else but food.

On the other hand, DiGiorno Pizza is absolutely killing it on Twitter. Almost all of their tweets are related to pizza or food in one way or another. They never say “our pizza is best” or “order pizza from us”. Nevertheless, with visual tweets like these, they manage to put a smile on our face.

What Are The Key Metrics You Should Consider in Twitter Analytics?

Twitter analytics provide a wide range of data for us to take home. Though, some of these metrics are just more important than others. Here’s what I always look for in the Analytics section while working on any marketing strategy.

Check the change in your followers

This is one of the most evident metrics that you should keep a strict eye on. After all, if your followers are not growing (or declining), then you are certainly doing something wrong on Twitter.

Total profile visits, impressions, and mentions

Besides followers, you can also get to know about the total profile visits, mentions, impressions, and the change in these parameters. Needless to say, the better these metrics, the better your strategy has been.

Get to know details about your audience

If you are not sure of what kind of content you should come up with, then visit the “Audience” tab of the analytics page. This will let you know the demographic distribution of your audience, their interests, age, language, and so much more.

Identify your top-performing content

There is a dedicated section for “Top Tweets” on the Analytics page that you should visit regularly. It will show the top-performing content of the last 4 weeks, letting you identify what your audience liked the most. You can work on a similar content for the upcoming posts this way.

More engagement detail

Apart from impressions and engagement, there are tons of other things that you should focus on. The right panel of the “Tweets” section would contain details about engagement rates, replies, link clicks, likes, and retweets. You can see these details for the last 28 days and further analyze the results of your past marketing strategy.

Track promotional content

If you have promoted your tweets, then you should certainly check the analytics sections. It will give details like the overall impression, engagement, and engagement rate of your tweets. Furthermore, you can see the difference between the organic and promotional reach of the same content. This would be pretty crucial while calculating the ROI of your campaigns.

Identify future trends and events

If you want to make the most of the ongoing or future trends, then visit the “Events” section of the Analytics page. You will automatically be suggested all kinds of events with their key details. You can go to different sections or look for any specific event on the search bar as well. Also, there is a section to identify recurring trends for you to come up with more relevant content.

Know the best time to tweet

Although the native Twitter Analytics won’t provide this feature, you can’t use a third-party tool (like Buffer) for it. The tool will analyze your audience and the past tweet activity to come up with the best time to post your content.

Get suggestions for related hashtags

There are several tools that would suggest you industry-specific keywords to help you get more traction. All you need to do is enter some keywords and your domain to get specific results that can improve the overall impression of your content.

Track your presence on Twitter

Since Twitter does not provide this feature, you can use a third-party social tracking tool instead. In this way, you can track your brand’s hashtags, keywords, or even keep an eye on your competitors.

Bonus: Export your data

If you want to save this data offline or convert it into visuals, then you can also export it as well. Just go to the “Tweets” section and select the duration for which you wish to export the data. You can export data for the last 7 days, 28 days, or any specific month in a CSV format.

All-purpose Twitter Analytics Tools to Try in 2019

While the native feature of Twitter Analytics is free and provides tons of details, it does have some pitfalls. If you want to get into analytics in detail, then consider using the following third-party reliable tools.

Socialert

Socialert is a popular and user-friendly analytics tool that will certainly home handy to you. It can be used to track hashtags, keywords, mentions, and even particular accounts. In this way, you can keep a track on your own social media presence, do social listening, and even competitor tracking.

It provides a dedicated tracking of details like impressions, range, and engagement of any content.

You can perform an in-depth analysis of your Twitter account, identify your top followers, the best-performing content, and so on.

With its live social listening feature, you can keep track of tweet chats, events, or any keyword.

All the details are represented in visually appealing formats and can be exported in different ways.

Buffer

Buffer is an all-in-one social media monitoring tool. Mostly, it is used to schedule tweets and content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Though, it has a dedicated analytics section to provide in-depth details about your Twitter presence.

It will let you attain in-depth information regarding any tweet – capturing its engagement, reach, and overall coverage.

You can keep an eye on your competitors and compare it with your profile as well.

It will analyze your tweets and suggest the best time to post new content.

Sprout Social

Ideally, Sprout Social is a complete Twitter management tool used by leading experts. It can help you manage multiple profiles in one place, schedule your tweets, work with your team, and get in-depth analytics as well. While the tool comes with a price tag, it certainly offers a wide range of features to justify it.

You can get reports of multiple Twitter profiles in one place and even draw comparisons between them.

It can help you track the follower growth of your profile, engagement and impression of individual tweets, and other crucial details.

You can also perform social listening with its keyword and hashtag tracker.

All the information is presented via stunning visuals that can readily be used.

Quintly

Quintly is a benchmarking tool that will let you analyze not only your content, but you can also draw comparisons with your competitors as well. It provides over 350 different metrics and supports every leading platform like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

Get detailed reports about the performance of your content and campaigns in one place.

You can also track the progress of your competitors and compare it with your profile.

It also supports API integrations to expand the overall functioning of the tool.

Visually appealing insights that can be exported in different formats

That’s a wrap, everyone! I’m sure that after following these suggestions, you would be able to make the most of Twitter Analytics. Although the native feature of the platform would help you in numerous ways, you can also use a third-party tool to get better results. Go ahead and give some of these analytics tools a try and share your experience with us in the comments below.